Searching High and Low for Tokyo’s Unique Urban Shrines

Construction in Tokyo moves at a breakneck pace — you feel like you’re never visiting the same neighborhood twice. With land prices on the rise, even sacred sites like Shinto shrines find themselves at the mercy of economic and political interests, threatened with displacement by commercial buildings and public works projects. However, these shrines are important to their communities, serving as places where people can make offerings to their local deities and pray for protection and good fortune.

Some shrines end up merging with office buildings or residences, while others find themselves relegated to alleyways or moved across town, but very few of them are wiped from the map altogether. In spite of the forces of urbanization, natural disaster, and municipal redevelopment, small-scale urban shrines like the ones I’ve listed have survived to the present day due to the tenacity and ingenuity of local residents and businesses working to preserve some of Tokyo’s oldest traditions.

Hanabusa Inari Shrine

It was hard not to look suspicious when I approached the Hanabusa Inari Shrine amidst the hustle and bustle of Akihabara. After checking that the coast was clear, I slipped into the narrow alley where the shrine has survived the years, shrouded in permanent shadow by the tall buildings that surround it. Compared to the ornamentation of the nearby Kanda Myojin Shrine, Hanabusa Inari feels rather bare bones; there’s little more than a stone torii gate, a single wooden building, and two (unusually caged) statues of foxes, who act as messengers for the deity Inari. More than one third of all Shinto shrines in Japan are Inari shrines, which can be found everywhere from Kyoto’s famed Fushimi Inari Shrine to rice fields, factory rooftops, and back alleyways. Widely associated with fertility and agriculture, Inari has also been worshipped for centuries as a deity bringing economic prosperity to urban areas — a perfect fit for Akihabara and Ginza, both known primarily for their shopping districts.

Once difficult to find, the shrine now boasts its own Google Maps entry, so don’t expect to be the only ones trying to reach the center of the labyrinth. Despite this recent attention from urban explorers, Hanabusa Inari Shrine lacks any formal oversight, and all day-to-day maintenance is performed voluntarily by local residents. Perhaps partly for this reason, much of its history is unknown. The shrine dates back to the Edo period (1603-1868), and may have originally belonged to a private household. Once destroyed during the Allied bombing of Tokyo in 1945, it was rebuilt in 1950; after that, it largely vanishes from historical record. At one time its torii gate faced onto a main road, but the shrine eventually became a casualty of Tokyo’s rapid postwar urbanization. As Akihabara developed throughout the 1950s, going from an unregulated black market to the “electric town” we know today, its layout changed immensely. Hanabusa Inari was hidden away, out of sight but never forgotten by the local residents who continue looking after it to this day.

Asahi Inari Shrine

Another Inari shrine located in an unassuming office building near Ginza’s central shopping area, Asahi Inari is a two-for-one special. The ancillary shrine at street level is connected by a pipe to the main shrine on the roof, so even prayers made from the sidewalk will reach the ears of the deity above much like a game of tin-can telephone. The main hall is open from 10am to 6pm, and if you catch the shrine office on a weekday before 3pm, you can get your very own protective omamori amulet or goshuin stamp as a souvenir.

As the guardian deity of the Ginza San-chome area, the Asahi Inari Shrine has been beloved by locals for decades. In 1983, the neighboring Daiko Building was renovated and expanded; instead of relocating, the shrine merged with the new building to continue watching over its precinct. Recently, the shrine attracted renewed attention when director Makoto Shinkai featured a similar rooftop shrine in his 2019 animated film Weathering with You.

Kakugo Inari Shrine

Although the Ginza Six complex may look brand new, it was once Ginza’s oldest Western-style department store. When it opened as Matsuzakaya in 1924, it had the distinction of being the first in Japan to allow its customers to wear their street shoes indoors. The Kakugo Inari Shrine was built on the store’s roof in 1929 as a branch of Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. Since the Edo period, small Inari shrines were often built by well-established stores in order to protect them from the frequent fires that devoured the city’s many flammable buildings.

When Matsuzakaya closed for renovations in 2013, the fate of Kakugo Inari was uncertain, but the owners and tenants of Ginza Six banded together to preserve its legacy. The revamped shrine sits proudly in the far corner of the rooftop garden 14 stories up, a vast green oasis that offers a 360° view of the city. From here, the guardian deity can watch over the northeast corner (or “demon gate”) of the building, the direction from which evil spirits are said to approach.

Mimeguri Shrine & the Shusse Jizo Statue

The Ginza Mitsukoshi Store sits at the very heart of the district, just across the street from the iconic Seiko House Clock Tower – when I picture Ginza, this is the scene that comes to mind. The trip to the Terrace Garden is surprisingly convoluted – you can only move between the eight and ninth floors via elevator – but you’ll be rewarded with a breath of fresh air and a visit to the storied shrine in the rooftop’s corner. The shrine office is open from 11am to 3pm every day of the week, with a break from 12pm to 1pm. Here you can find netsuke figurines of the Shusse Jizo hand-carved from Japanese boxwood alongside more standard fare such as incense, candles, and omamori amulets.

The original Mimeguri Shrine is located in the Mukojima neighborhood of Sumida. Its patron deity is Uganomitama, a harvest goddess worshipped as a manifestation of Inari since premodern times. The Mitsui family, proprietors of the Mitsukoshi chain of department stores, chose it as their family’s protectorate shrine centuries ago due to the similarity of their names — the characters for Mimeguri (三囲) contain those for Mitsui (三井). As a result of this close relationship, to this day every Mitsukoshi store includes a small Mimeguri branch shrine on its rooftop in order to ensure the family’s continued prosperity.

Alongside this shrine is a Buddhist statue of the bodhisattva Jizo — historically, Shinto and Buddhism have been deeply intertwined, and it’s common in Japan to see this syncretic combination of elements. This particular statue is called the Shusse Jizo; the one in the photograph is a newly carved replica, with the original statue cloistered safely in the pagoda to its right. It was unearthed during construction on the Sanjikkenbori canal in the late 1800s and placed on an open plot of land in Ginza Yon-chome. When Ginza Mitsukoshi was renovated in 1968, the displaced statue was moved to the rooftop of the store. Jizo is a beloved figure in Japan, often watching over travelers from intersections and roadsides. “Shusse” can mean “professional success” or “promotion,” since this statue has been promoted twice, first from the riverbed to the Yonchome intersection, and then again to the top of one of Japan’s most enduringly successful department stores.

Special Events / Further Exploring

Although many smaller urban shrines lack full-time or even part-time personnel, and therefore don’t always offer omamori amulets or goshuin stamps that visitors have come to expect, every year the Ginza Eight-District Shrine Tour (Ginza hatcho-jinja meguri) brings together 13 shrines and temples, including some that are otherwise off-limits. Visitors who pay their respects at each shrine will receive a special commemorative gift, limited to one per person. Although the official dates for 2026 have not been announced, the tour is generally held over a single weekend in late September or October.